TEL AVIV - Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi
is showing first signs of military strain, if
mostly because the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) has become so desperate that
it has embarked on an assassination campaign
against him. It is yet to be seen how many more
self-declared red lines the leaders of the
intervention will breach to avoid - or delay at
great human cost - losing the "humanitarian" war.

It is hard to overlook that operations to
"crush the head of the snake" (kill or capture
rogue leaders that refuse to be defeated) seem to
be the latest military fashion in the West. First
it was Ivory Coast's Laurent Gbagbo, who is
persistently rumored to have been captured by
French commandos rather than by the local forces
of his enemy, Alassane Ouattara. Former South
African president Thabo Mbeki lays out the case
for how the intervention

on the part of the
international community, and specifically the
French, was misguided and morally dubious from the
start. [1]

More recently, Osama bin
Laden's assassination in Pakistan has raised
considerable controversy. [2] Somewhere in
between, at least two of what looked a whole lot
like attempts on Gaddafi's life took place in
Libya - one about 10 days ago, [3] and another one
on Saturday, killing his obscure youngest son,
Saif al-Arab Gaddafi. "Targeted assassinations
have become an increasingly favorite tool of US
security policy," Stephen Walt, Harvard
international affairs professor, writes in Foreign
Policy. "...And there's certainly some reason to
believe that this is how NATO is trying to resolve
the civil war in Libya, though of course we will
never say so openly."

It bears noting that
the bombing that took the life of Saif al-Arab
came roughly at the same time as a new peace offer
from Gaddafi, which NATO and the rebels rejected
promptly. The moral ambiguity - or outright
hypocrisy - of the assassination attempts is also
underscored by the fact that Obama has publicly
ruled out killing Gaddafi several times in the
past.

A desperate move though this may be,
it is unclear how it would help the situation in
Libya, beyond giving NATO a symbolic opportunity
to declare victory, George W Bush-in-Iraq style,
and to deal with the consequences later. Those
consequences would be unpleasant, to say the least
- for if Gaddafi goes, two alternative evils wait
in store.

Firstly, like Osama bin Laden,
he is the symbol of his side, but in practice he
seems to have delegated a lot of the direct
responsibilities to those around him, specifically
his sons. To borrow a corporate metaphor, he is
more like the chairman of the board rather than
the chief executive officer. His son Saif al-Islam
is in charge of propaganda and diplomacy (and most
likely designated successor) while his sons Khamis
and Mutassem seem to be spearheading the military
campaign.

This means that although the
government in Tripoli would be weakened by his
death, it is unlikely to crumble, at least in the
immediate aftermath, and the civil war would
become even more entrenched as many Libyans would
perceive him as a martyr fighting an invasion. The
international community - beyond NATO members and
a few countries in the Persian Gulf - would also
become more vocal against the intervention.

Secondly, if the government does collapse
eventually, this would plunge the country into
utter chaos and would most likely result in an
atrocious civil war and massive waves of refugees
flooding North Africa and Europe. Libyan society
has never been particularly cohesive, and a lot of
bridges were burnt in the last few months as the
rebellion pitted the western part of the country
against the eastern one. In addition, arms
proliferation has soared, [4] and various factions
and interests have mushroomed; tribalism is also
rampant. This situation is a recipe for disaster.

Some could argue that the unsuccessful
assassination attempts were meant to deter
Gaddafi, and there are some signs of success - for
example, around the time of the first bombing, the
colonel pulled his forces away from the center of
the largest rebel stronghold in the western part
of Libya, the town of Misrata which has been under
siege for months.

A stepped-up NATO
campaign against his forces, which reportedly
killed hundreds of soldiers and destroyed many
dozens of tanks and other vehicles, helped degrade
his military capability and beat back subsequent
incursions in the city and in smaller rebel
centers in the western mountains.

However,
all this did not contribute to human security or
to the protection of civilians. Civilian
casualties from the air campaign aside, the
frustration of Gaddafi's attempts at conquest of
the rebel bastions has led to his use of
inaccurate rockets and artillery which have killed
and wounded many. While his army failed in
repeated attempts to take over Misrata's port and
vital link to the world, it managed to lay mines
in the waters next to it, and sustained rocket and
mortar fire on it despite the bombings.

NATO, meanwhile, is showing signs of
strain as well. Recently, France reacted sharply
against Italy's decision to grant travel visas to
thousands of North African refugees, [5] and even
threatened to leave the Schengen treaty. Speak
about moral ambiguity - for "humanitarian warrior"
Sarkozy, the use of violence is quite fine, but
shouldering some of the burdens in his own country
isn't.

The rebels, too, are not doing very
well - they have so failed to make significant
territorial gains against Gaddafi, despite the air
campaign. The eastern front is in a stalemate.
They did manage to conquer briefly a key border
post in the western part of the country, but were
later overrun by the government forces, and the
fighting has been going back-and-forth since,
occasionally spilling into Tunisia. [6]

On
Wednesday, moreover, their spokesman said that the
Transitional National Council in Benghazi needed
urgently US$1.5 billion. "We need this for medical
supplies, for food supplies, to keep the minimum
functions of normal life - electricity, running
hospitals etc," he said, quoted by al-Jazeera.

Yet the alliance - or the most vocal parts
of it - is digging in its heels. It seems remotely
possible that the strategy is to pack up and run
after a symbolic success, but Western military
advisors present among the rebels and all the
other military assistance (shipments of
"non-lethal" military equipment have been
confirmed; rumors of covert forces on the ground
and arms supplies are becoming louder and louder)
tell a different tale. Just last week, Italy's
parliament approved an expanded role of the
country in the war.

In past interventions
in civil wars - Vietnam stands as an extreme case,
though Bosnia is also an example - military
advisers have been a prelude to "boots on the
ground". The United Nations Security Council
Resolution 1973, which authorized enforcing a
"no-fly zone" over the country, specifically
prohibits an invasion, but it has already been
stretched so thin that it is irrelevant to the
campaign. Moreover, it appears that a modified
narrative is being prepared to justify wider
involvement.

A couple of weeks ago, right
before Gaddafi pulled his forces from the center
of Misrata, several world leaders suggested that
"humanitarian" forces might be sent there. While
the colonel seems to have preempted that - or at
least delayed it - now we are starting to hear
more and more about Gaddafi's war crimes. The
International Criminal Court's top prosecutor,
Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who in the past has been
accused of bias, [7] announced on Wednesday that
he will seek an arrest warrant for the Libyan
leader and at least two aides for crimes against
humanity.

Talk about justice,
Obama-kills-Bin Laden-style. A suspicious spin is
also emerging about the use of rape as a weapon of
war; Moreno-Ocampo specifically accused Gaddafi of
this in his speech. There are a number of reports
of rape in Libya, and such a heinous crime cannot
be taken lightly, but neither should be
manipulated allegations of it. "We have a few
credible cases of gender based violence and rape,
but the evidence is not there at this point to
suggest it is of a systematic nature, or an
official policy," said last week Fred Abrahams, a
representative of Human Rights Watch.

The
implicit paradigm is Bosnia. But in Bosnia there
were rape camps and systematic campaigns to
impregnate "enemy" women in order to challenge and
destroy the identity of said enemy. This is not -
certainly doesn't seem to be, even from rebel
reports - the case in Libya. The collective memory
of the international community, however, is short
and generally pays little attention to detail.

In any case, such a tactic would indicate
that Gaddafi has lost all hope to rule a united
Libya again, and is seeking to preempt any
possibility for a compromise in order to
consolidate his own supporters. I have argued
before that he might resort to such tactics, [8]
but only as a weapon of last resort, and he just
doesn't seem to be nearly as desperate at this
time.

A recent al-Jazeera report shows
stockpiles of Viagra and Cialis, of which rebels
claim to have found large amounts on captured
Gaddafi soldiers and in bombed government tanks.
[9] The allegation goes that Gaddafi ordered his
men to rape "rebel" women, and provided them with
the means to do so (perhaps less a statement that
government troops are impotent as an implication
that they are acting against their own will).

What seems a bit strange in the images -
though obviously this is only circumstantial
evidence - is that the medications showed seem
right off the shelf, neatly packaged with
bar-codes and bearing Pfizer logos. Throughout
Africa, on the other hand, and specifically on the
black market on which Gaddafi reportedly relies
heavily, countless generic medications circulate
to treat anything from worms to impotence to
Malaria to AIDS (the HIV epidemic and expensive
AIDS medication patents have significantly boosted
this underground trade).

It is hard to
imagine, to say the least, that these new
containers were found either on the bodies of
captured soldiers in a prolonged military
campaign, or in burnt-out tanks. It looks too much
like a manipulation, and has the logic of one -
let's recall, for example, how the US invading
invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to bring there women's
rights.

Overall, the assisted civil war in
Libya seems to be entering a new and uglier stage,
whether that involves a protracted civil war after
an eventual NATO pullout or a ground war. In both
cases, the humanitarian cause will likely suffer
the most.